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[Leave the Monastery]

Thank you for the explanation. I guess I am doomed, then, because I just can't seem to believe any of this stuff without better proof than faith, but you give me hope.

[jimwalton]

Oh my. There is plenty of proof and evidence of "this stuff". A workable definition of faith for this context is "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable to make the assumption." The Bible doesn't imply that faith is blind. In the Bible, faith is evidentiary. In my opinion, belief is always a choice, and is always based on evidence. When you sit down in a chair, you didn’t think twice about sitting down. You believe that the chair will hold you. Faith? Yes. You’ve sat in chairs hundreds of times, but you can't be absolutely sure it will hold you this time. Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That’s faith, and it was a conscious choice.

Almost all of life works this way because we can never know what lies ahead. Every time you turn a door knob you are expressing faith. Because 10,000 times you’ve turned a door knob, and it opened the door. So you turn the knob and move forward. Does it always work that way? No. Sometimes you turn the knob and the door doesn’t open. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption.

We know chairs hold people. That's past experience and learning. We know turning door knobs open doors. We know that when we turn a key a car starts. But every time we turn a car key, we do it because we believe it will start. The evidence is compelling, and it was a conscious choice. We don't know for sure that the car will start, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't. Then we use our knowledge to try to figure out what to do about it. We dial our phone (as an act of faith, assuming it will work and help us reach another person), and try to get help.

You'll notice in the Bible that evidence precedes faith. God appears to Moses in a burning bush before he expect him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on. The whole Bible is God revealing himself to us all—and I mean actually, not through some exercise of faith.

My faith in God is a conscious choice because I find the evidence compelling. It's an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for me to make that assumption. When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. The same is true for my belief in the existence of God, my belief that the Bible is God's word, and my understanding of how life works.

[Kermit the Frog]

So since God is all knowing and above the realms we, as humans, can understand he surely knows the past, present and future. If that is the case again there is no "choice" since God knows exactly that by allowing Satan to "wreak havoc on the plant" he will eventually win in the endgame and gather more souls. Correct?

Root of all evil was meant figurativly, but I can see how this is confusing in such a context. I'm sorry. So let me put it into another metaphor: God chose to punish the child who didn't know any better for longer and before he punishes the knowing mind, the bad influence, in this case Satan. Do you not think this is very flawed? He surely must enjoy punishing people to educate them.

I will assume you are familiar with the big gun debate. While I don't want to go into that issue, I do believe they got 1 thing right: Guns as inanimate objects do not kill people. Here I would like to use the same logic to explain to you that the sin cannot punish, but merely be the reason for it. Inevitably God does punish and is in your words the "perpetrator"

[jimwalton]

I'm trying hard to understand what you have written, but you may need to clarify for me.

> God is all-knowing,...past, present and future.

Correct.

> If that is the case again there is no "choice" since God knows exactly that by allowing Satan to "wreak havoc on the plant" he will eventually win in the endgame and gather more souls.

You lose me here. Are you saying people have no choice? Satan has no choice? God has no choice? You said in a previous post that "God chooses to punish humans for eternity before he punishes the root of all evil." I corrected that statement. In this post you said God knows that Satan's activity will not change the final outcome of salvation history. That's right, but what does that have to do with choice? Sorry, I'm lost. You'll need to try again.

> God chose to punish the child who didn't know any better for longer and before he punishes the knowing mind, the bad influence, in this case Satan.

No, this is incorrect. It's not the Bible's teaching or theology that is flawed (if that is what you meant by "Do you not think this is very flawed?"), but your understanding of the Bible. The child DID know better. Adam and Eve knew better, and so do we. God was and is clear about what is right and what is wrong, we have knowledge of it, and so there is no "child who didn't know any better" in the scenario. Humans, from the first to us, know just as much as Satan, and are justifiably spiritually and morally culpable.

> He surely must enjoy punishing people to educate them.

This is a completely wrong understanding and an unwarranted accusation. I don't know from where you get this distortion of biblical teaching. God doesn't enjoy punishing anyone (Lamentations 3.33). What the Bible tells us is that it grieves him deeply, if you want to know what the Bible actually says.

> the sin cannot punish, but merely be the reason for it. Inevitably God does punish and is in your words the "perpetrator"

No. Sin does punish. It's a case of inevitable cause and effect, more like gravity than the gun debate. Sin brings death as an unavoidable consequence. It's not like a gun where someone who owns a gun still has to choose whether or not to pull the trigger. It's more like gravity where someone jumps off a cliff. They don't get to choose whether to go down or not. In jumping they made the choice. When humans chose sin (and when each of us chooses sin) they chose death. It comes with the package. Sin is its own punishment.

In the teaching of the Bible, God is continually acting to undo the effects of sin, to redeem people from it, and to save them from death. His actions, totally opposite of what you are assuming, are to bring life, not death. Sin brings death, God brings life. Humans are the perpetrators, because we are the ones who brought sin into the picture, and death with sin (Romans 5.12).